This is the third and final episode of our discussion of Andrea Wulf's biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature. In this episode, we will discuss part 5 and have a general discussion about the entire book. As always with the book club, in each episode we will talk about whatever happened, so there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we have.
For this series, I'm joined by Cody Kommers, former guest of the podcast (episode 4), fellow podcaster, and fellow PhD student in cognitive neuroscience. Cody has a particular interest in travel and psychology.
Podcast links
Website: https://bjks.buzzsprout.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BjksPodcast
Cody's links
Website: https://www.codykommers.com/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=ImTtx_kAAAAJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/codykommers
Newsletter: https://codykommers.substack.com/
Ben's links
Website: www.bjks.page/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=-nWNfvcAAAAJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bjks_tweets
References
Humboldt (1807). Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the new continent during the years 1799-1804. G. Bell.
Humboldt (1845-62). Cosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the universe. Harper.
Isaacson (2011). Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster
Menand (2002). The metaphysical club: A story of ideas in America. Macmillan.
Menand (2021). The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Pausas & Bond (2019). Humboldt and the reinvention of nature. Journal of Ecology.
Poe (1848). Eureka: a prose poem.(An essay on the material and spiritual universe.). GP Putnam.
Rillig, Kiessling, Borsch, Gessler, Greenwood, Hofer ... & Jeltsch (2015). Biodiversity research: data without theory—theory without data. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Wulf (2015). The invention of nature: Alexander von Humboldt's new world. Knopf.
-
[This is an automated transcript with many errors]
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [00:00:00] So this is now the third and final part of our discussion of Andrea Wolf's Hum biography. The invention of nature. Actually, Cody, I wanted to, this is something I wanted to do since the first one, but I forgot. So I wanted to ask Cody, how are you doing? Or to put it in the way that Humbolt said when he was in the Amazon rainforest writing back to people in Berlin.
And you dearest. How is your monotonous life?
Cody Kommers: Oh, man. Um, probably not monotonous enough recently. Uh, actually, um, I, uh, Haley and I have been making weekly trips into London recently. Uh, and last Friday we were bartending this event at this opening of an art gallery. Uh, and so you were
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: bartending?
Cody Kommers: Yeah. Okay.
So we were putting on, we were putting on, uh, a little cocktail, uh, exhibition along with the art exhibition as well. And so I could probably [00:01:00] honestly be spending a little bit more time on the shit that I'm actually supposed to be doing and not jing off to do that as, it doesn't
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: even fit Damnit.
Cody Kommers: Anyway,
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I just wanted to get that quote in at least once.
Cody Kommers: Yeah, that's a good one.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, okay. I guess as usual, we can start with the summary of the chapters chapter 20. Revolutions across Europe. Humbold publishes parts three to five of Cosmos on the 6th of May, 1859, aged 89. Humboldt dies. His funeral procession is attended by tens of thousands, 16 days before his own death.
Darwin Rereads, personal narrative chapter 21. For reasons not entirely clear to me. This chapter provides 15 pages of the life story of George Perkins Marsh, a man who was mentioned only once and only in passing before this chapter, chapter 2217 pages about Antech, a man not mentioned even once in the entire book outside of this chapter.
Chapter 23, a chapter on John. Do you know how to pronounce his name? No. Muya Mu. [00:02:00] I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that guy. And then, yeah, the epilogue just kind of closes off the book. I guess it's two and a half pages, so I didn't write a proper summary for that. Um, but maybe we can start with. What we discussed slightly before recording, and also what's quite,
Cody Kommers: let's
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: talk Cosmo, uh, sorry.
I wanted to talk first about the, the, you know, my, my, my chapter summary usually was very neutral, describing the events of the work. And in this case it got slightly frustrated throughout. Um, I think we don't need to spend too much time on this, but yeah, as we, we both, uh, you know, said before we started recording, we were very surprised by what this last, the fifth part was.
I guess we, oh, at least I expected some sort of, well, something about hobo. And then, I mean for me it was just this confusion of, okay, first going like, okay, who is this Perkins Marsh guy and why am I reading [00:03:00] about him? I dunno if he's more, maybe he's more famous in America or in, you know, for people who do other things than I do.
But I had no idea who he was. So I kept going like, what, what, what is this? I mean, we had a chapter before about bolivar, but that made sense, right? Because it fit into it. But yeah, I found these three chapters, 21 to 23 a bit jarring and not entirely sure why they were there.
Cody Kommers: Yeah. So I found nothing of interest whatsoever in them.
And, uh, and so, okay, so having said that, trying to be sympathetic to, uh, Wolf's intentions here, it was sort of like, okay, maybe that was her way of contextualizing his. Legacy.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Mm-hmm.
Cody Kommers: And, um, saying, well, okay, here are other works that evidently were monumental in their own time and in their own areas and that sort of stuff.
They're not ones that are a particular note to me. And maybe that's just on me. Maybe I, I should, I would be better off. [00:04:00] Uh, having intimate familiarity with, with the people and work she was talking about. Um, but I could see that this would be, uh, you know, a kind of means of denouement towards like, okay, here is what Humboldt led to in the people who read his work, uh, afterwards.
That being said, for me personally, there was absolutely zero emotional resonance with, without that, uh, happened. Um, I could see that's how she was trying to go for it didn't work for me. Uh, but yeah, I was, I, uh, I didn't understand that was, it was, let's just say this, it was not the payoff that I was looking for after 300 pages of humble biography to, to get into things that just frankly weren't there were, were at most tangentially related.
Yeah. People who had read his work claimed to have liked it and then did something more or less entirely different.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I think, I mean, so there's. I think one thing that's slightly confusing is just exactly the, the framing of what the book is, because you know, the title is the Invention of Nature. It's not Alexander from Humbold.
So the book in a [00:05:00] wa, you know, from that perspective, I think it makes sense to then talk about how he led to this more environmental movement. And a lot of things that happened, uh, was still very relevant today. But, and this is the other thing, Andrea Wolf is not a biographer, she's a historian. So from that perspective, I think, you know, I already had that thought when there was a chapter on var.
I thought, I mean, fair enough, they knew each other, he influenced him, but why exactly is the entire chapter in var? But I think it's because, yeah, she's a historian, not a scientist or a biographer. So I think, but I always looked at this and it's always sold as a biography of Humboldt, which I guess, I mean it is to like 85% or whatever.
But I mean, for me it just also this John Muir, whatever. Guy, he, he seemed really annoying. Um, at the end I felt like, oh God, I'm glad I didn't have have to talk to them. Him. Um, I mean, heck, I, I knew of just because I know that he, you know, made these beautiful illustrations and drawings. But [00:06:00] yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to, it felt to me like we, a slightly weird to skip over the last three chapters of the book without mentioning them, at least briefly.
Cody Kommers: Oh yeah. It was supremely unsatisfying to, to, to get there and be like, I don't really need or want any of this information. Can I just be done now? Please. Like, he died. No, evidently there's nothing more that he's gonna do. So I kind of just like, uh, but no, you know, one of the things I think. This brought back to me was maybe remember just how much I do not like biographies in general.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Really. Okay.
Cody Kommers: Um, and so I would actually go so far as to say that my favorite of all genre of books is autobiography. And my least favorite in the general case is biography. And there's something about. So what I like about autobiography is that what I really want to know is I wanna know about how someone saw the world.
I wanna, I wanna know the, what the world looked like according to them, [00:07:00] no matter how kind of fucked up and, uh, totally off base and, and everything like that. I just, I just wanna know how they saw things and how, how that experience, uh, looked like to that. The, the facts of the matter in terms of the plot summary.
This is, you know, how it actually happened and that sort of stuff. That's supremely less interesting to me, uh, as just a series of, you know, here's, here's the things that happened in the order that they happened in, and kind of washed of the significance to the person to whom they happened. And so, uh, uh, yeah, I think a lot of the, the things that didn't resonate with me emotionally, uh, in this book are, you know, sort of things along that lines.
Ultimately, I felt like I got to know Andrea Wolf's worldview a lot more than I got to know Humboldt's Worldview, for example. You know, I talked in, I think in the first section about how she only quotes Humble half a line at a time. And that doesn't tell me about [00:08:00] Humboldt. That tells me which sentences like Humboldt wrote that she looked at and be like, yeah, that's a fucking great one.
Yeah. Um, and so I know that she agrees with those kinds of things and like finds those representative worldview, she po finds compelling and, uh, so I have, I'm pretty comfortable with her. Take on that. And I feel like I haven't quite penetrated into the mind of, of, of Humboldt through that. And I, I do think that's largely a function of the nature of, of, of biography in my opinion.
Uh, and certainly, uh, I, I don't think Wolf's treatment did anything to overcome that.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah. That's fair. Have you just sort of curious, have you read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson? I
Cody Kommers: have not read any Walter Isaacson.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 'cause that one I think I was, I think that is one where maybe because jobs was, was still alive when it was written, uh, or at least parts of it were written.
That I think is one of those where you really feel like you get to know what Steve Jobs thought and felt and how he viewed the world really. And that is one that really stands out to me as one that I thought was really interesting, maybe [00:09:00] precisely for those reasons that you mentioned. Uh, so it seems then that's, um.
Judging about what we just said, we should have not read the Invention of Nature, but we should have read Personal Narrative by Home Word. Seems like that would've been a more, uh, it
Cody Kommers: definitely
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: fitting book.
Cody Kommers: That that's definitely, that's definitely, um, it's wet my appetite for that. It's made me want to go check that out.
And same, same with Cosmos. But, but no, I, you know, I wouldn't be surprised about the, the Walter Isaacson thing. Uh, and that's, you know, I definitely, uh, should get around reading at least one of his biographies. I wouldn't be surprised if he, if he did a great job about that. Uh, I think he's definitely one of those singular figures in his genre that does it so well.
Wouldn't be surprised if he transcends that. But I think, uh, biography as a, um, genre does suffer from that. Uh, you know, kind of, but here's the thing is that I really love. Group biographies. Um hmm. And so the thing that I like about group biographies, and the reason that I think my favorite chapters in this book were, um, the [00:10:00] Gutta and the, the, the Darwin one, uh, is because then you have juxtaposition.
You have, here is a social situation, here is a, here's a milieu, here's a context. I'm gonna tell you about the context, and I'm gonna show you the inter, the interlocking, you know, sort of experience of, you know, uh, n is greater than or equal to two people who engaged in that context and did something with it, and that sort of thing.
And then you can start to, in that comparative method, which not incidentally is what Humboldt venerated so much in his, in his travels, trying to compare, you know, south America and Russia, that sort of stuff. So I'm a big fan of anything that takes, you know, purports to take a comparative method there. Um, but uh, for that reason, I, I generally really enjoy, uh, group biographies.
Do you
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: have one or two examples? I'm not sure. I dunno whether I've read something like that or maybe, yeah. Do you have, yeah. So that you really liked.
Cody Kommers: Two of my favorite non-fiction depends on which, um, version of Cody's [00:11:00] favorite nonfiction books we're, we're talking about. But there's one version of Cody's favorite nonfiction books.
Okay. Uh, or my two favorite, uh, books of all time are, uh, by, uh, uh, Lu Luan we talked about last time.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah.
Cody Kommers: Um, and that's The Metaphysical Club is the group biography to end all group biographies. Um, William James, uh, uh, Charles Sanders purse, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Dewey, the American Pragmatists.
Then a group biography of very different sort Cold War intellectuals, um, art and Thought and the Cold War, uh, called The Free World. And that just came out this year. And that's much that also.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah,
Cody Kommers: yeah, yeah, exactly.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah, I mean,
Cody Kommers: and that's
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: your interview with him made me want to read them, but then I saw how long they are and I thought, oh God,
Cody Kommers: they're for the book club.
No, they're, they're endeavors like that, that really, you're not just gonna sit down and, and, and leave through them. And I think that's part of the reason why they're so impactful as you dedicate so much God time to reading them that [00:12:00] like, you know, just like definitely you're a different person. Like you've, you've gone through years of your life after you've finished reading it, so you of course have changed along the way.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. Then I'm gonna add, so I actually, well actually, I genuinely want to consider doing one of them for the book club, so I just have to find someone now who wants to read through a thousand pages of whatever those books are, so, yeah.
Cody Kommers: Yeah, yeah.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Anyway, um, cosmos, so it seems like you had something that's something you really wanted to talk about.
Do you wanna. Take the lead on that
Cody Kommers: one. I just wanna talk about Cosmos because it's, it seemed like such a cool project, such a cool endeavor. Uh, I'm so sympathetic to what he was going for. So, um, I think Vol did a very good job of summarizing some of his, what he was trying to do. And obviously she's read that book and I haven't, so maybe I'll just read a passage or two of her, her summary so people can get a feel for.
For, for what? This was her, this is her [00:13:00] description of, of Cosmos. Cosmos was unlike any previous book about nature. Humboldt took his readers on a journey from outer space to earth, and then from the surface of the planet into its inner core. He discussed comets, the Milky Way and the solar system, as well as terrestrial magnetism, volcanoes, and the snow line of mountains.
He wrote about the migration of the human species, about plants, animals, and the microscopic organisms that live in stagnant water or on the weathered surface rocks, where others just that nature was stripped of its magic as humankind penetrated into its deepest secrets, Humboldt believed exactly the opposite.
How could this be? Humboldt asked In a world in which the colored rays of an aurora unite an quivering sea flame creating a site so otherworldly the splendor of which no description can reach, uh, knowledge he said could never kill the creative force of imagination. Instead, it brought excitement, astonishment, and wonderousness, the most important part of cosmos.
Was the long introduction of almost 100 pages. Here, Humboldt spelled out his vision of a world that pulsated with life. Everything was part of this never ending [00:14:00] activity of the animated forces. Humboldt wrote, nature was a living hole where organisms, organisms were bound together in a net like intricate fabric.
Um, and so yeah, I think that that, that's kind of. That's the way she portrays cosmos is that humble. It's essentially humble's theory of everything and not everything in an abstract sense, as in some, you know, little equation that gives you all of the, the answers if you plug in the right things, but the actual concrete, tangible manifestation of things that humble encountered, uh, from the, you know, largest solar system level to the smallest microscopic level.
Uh, and to connect that in the theme that she's been talking about since page one, which is his, his concept of the interconnectedness of, of nature and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, it sounds like an amazing book and, uh, that there's a ton of cool stuff in there.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, what I find interesting about the book is that it's, um, you know, I also haven't read it, [00:15:00] um, although there's one, I read the first abstract, uh, paragraph and, uh, there's one word that caught my attention there that we can talk about in a second.
But what I find interest interesting is that he really. I mean, like one, one thing I kept wondering when, while reading the invention of nature is just, is hobo really scientist or not? Because in some extent it seems to me he's, he was an adventurer and a science communicator. That to me seems to be mostly what he was about.
And one thing that really struck me, especially about the last parts of the last parts of Cosmos, is just how much Humboldt was a writer and an organizer of other people's knowledge in the sense of organ. Like, I mean, literally asking them like, put in the numbers here, I need the figures. Like what's the precise stuff here?
And that he was just corresponding with, with, I dunno, hundreds of people or however many, uh, throughout the years to really, it, it seemed almost like [00:16:00] it, maybe not in the beginning, but definitely at the end it seemed like more of a group effort than, you know, orchestrated by him rather than. I mean, like all of these things were stuff that he obviously had never done any experiments on or any of those things, right?
Like physics or cosmology or whatever. Um, so I just found it really interesting how maybe coupled with his public lectures, he really seemed to just try to present to the world the knowledge of science that exists at the time.
Cody Kommers: And so Ben, how, how do you feel about that? What does it make you feel about Humble, you make, like, the way you kind of say it now, it, it sounds like the subtext is that you, you feel like that makes him less of a scientist.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So yeah, I, for me, the main question is whether he even really, I guess like one thing I kept asking throughout this book, and also because Humboldt himself, or at least through yeah, he, himself and Andrea Wolf also seemed to have this, I guess, uh, I just kept asking myself like, what does it actually mean to do [00:17:00] science?
Because in a way, going out to the Amazon Forest, you know, doing lots of measurements, which is cool, collecting lots of stuff, it's great. Then saying everything's connected. That's not, is that science? I dunno. It seemed to me that there's this, like I know he had specific things. Yeah, like the one thing was the, the, the two things that really, and some of the other things I also read that really stood out is that he, uh, I, I've forgotten what one of those geological words are, but something like that.
And the other thing was just this idea that, that biodiversity depends on geography or whatever. Uh, if you say it like that, it sounds very trivial, but it sounds, everyone seems to agree that that was really something that he advanced. But yeah, I, I've still kind of struggling to think of that really as science.
And I mean, I'm not saying it's not a contribution, right. I'm not saying, and I'm not saying he didn't know a lot, it just seems it was more a bit of, I dunno, [00:18:00] it strikes me that's what I meant like as a modern com science communicator, someone who really. Knows things, but doesn't actually advance knowledge per directly, but more by transmitting it to other people who do science or to the general public who might be interested in it.
Um, so I think, you know, also his measurements seem to be very valuable to many scientists. But yeah, I mean, one thing maybe, maybe again, I, I can just quote this now then from this one paper that I read. So I basically had a, I had a brief look at kind of who is citing this biography just to see kind of, you know, whether there's anything, anything interesting there and there, there's, there were a few articles here and one is called, uh, biodiversity Research, data Without Theory, theory without Data by Reig, etal.
And Reig is seems to be like one of those really, uh, influential, uh, what is he, uh, scientists, I dunno exactly what he does. Um, ecologist or something like that. And. [00:19:00] They, this is like a commentary article, and I'm just gonna read the first paragraph of that because I think it maybe captures this kind of tension between different kinds of science that I'm thinking about.
So the quote is, meet two famous researchers from the early days of biodiversity research, Charles Darwin and Alexander Van Humboldt. Darwin developed a powerful theory using a limited amount of data by modern standards. Humboldt in contrast, compiled a cosmos of data without developing a major theory.
Although some of humboldt's observations on latitudinal biodiversity gradients were later used to develop theory. This tension between data and theory still still persists today and is perhaps becoming more acute. And I think for me, what I really associate with science is maybe more the Darwin kind of idea, the actual going, okay, we have all these things.
How do they relate? And it seems to me that homework was much, well. Only really for those five years when he went on his [00:20:00] first travel. Right. And for the last year. So he had basically only had six years in which he even collected stuff. So yeah, I don't know. I, I, this book has really made me think about like what it means to do science, even though maybe that's a kind of irrelevant, slightly, yeah.
Maybe the question's not that important, but it's really made me wonder what it means to do science and whether hum board even fits into that category.
Cody Kommers: Well, I actually think this is, this is a hugely deep question and one worth considering and, and certainly one that I ask myself, uh, a lot. And I think one of the lens that I think, uh, about this question through is the lens of professionalization.
So when you say the word scientist or any, any of the related terms, I think you're referring to two. Different but interrelated things. One is the concept of, you know, a truth seeker who is looking to use an empirical method to better understand the world, um, through some sort [00:21:00] of data collection and interpretation of, of what those data mean.
And then the other is that you are employed as a scientist doing science that is your living and that sort of thing. And I, and ideally, you'd have these two things come together and be, you know, working towards the same thing. However, one of the big problems of being a scientist in the modern world is that we're seeing more and more divergence between those two.
Versions of what it is to be a scientist, right? And so today's highly professionalized discipline, uh, is not just about quote, truth seeking and whatever you want. You've got all sorts of stuff from, you know, public, uh, publish and perish culture, uh, to, you know, uh, everything, uh, through. Peer review and what you have to do for free.
This sort of stuff, the mechanisms of science become, become, uh, much more important. So in the context of Humboldt, here's something that, uh, vol had to say that I, I think is, is helpful for thinking about this. And [00:22:00] so, uh, this is quoting from her. And so in 1834, the very year that the term scientist was first coined, hailing the beginning of the professionalization of the sciences and the hardening lines between the different scientific disciplines, Humboldt began a book that did exactly the opposite.
Cosmos. Uh, as science moved away from nature into laboratories and universities separating itself off and distinct disciplines, Humboldt created a work that brought together all that professional science was trying to keep apart. Um, and I think I agree with a lot of your characterization of, of what you were, uh, saying and your suspicions and, and, and questions, that sort of stuff.
But I think another useful way to look through it as is that, well, Humboldt was doing in a very meaningful and, and profound way was this. Amateur in the etymological sense of doing something because you love it. Amateur, uh, scientists of going out there and just trying to figure things out. And I think there was a lot of on the ground science that he was doing, like little measurements [00:23:00] and this and that, which we don't fully understand from the wolf biography what the nature of that was.
I probably wouldn't personally care anyway. Yeah. Um, but, uh, and I'm, I'm, I'm glad to have been spread the details of that. Uh, I, so I suspect there was, in that sense lots of stuff, uh, that, that was coming out of it. Um, and, and, and everything. But to have this concept of a scientist in this really pure form, someone who just wants to, uh, find stuff out and then, you know, further elucidate in writing and that sort of stuff.
And this, uh, as opposed to this highly professionalized, this is what I do, this is how my peers judge me. Uh, I think Humboldt was a really cool version of that. Uh, you know, we can call it amateur scientist.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, so, um, I don't actually mean that much. The distinction between like being an academic and being a scientist.
I mean, what I mean more is that for me a scientist, someone who, I mean you could say creates knowledge, but I think for me the more interesting thing, [00:24:00] maybe this is actually more thing of the time, is to dis um, make the word simpler by explaining underlying principles of how things work and why things are certain ways.
Um, maybe actually that's just what I was thinking maybe at humboldt's time, maybe, I dunno how much data there was in that sense. Maybe actually, you know, getting data, you know, having more information in that sense is actually a much more valuable than it is today when we, I feel often need the frameworks almost more that can reduce information almost.
But what I mean more is that just he. He had, I mean, when we think of this, yeah, as I said, he had basically six years in which a really collected data. It seems to me those five years in South America and the one year in Russia, when he really did the all those measurements, that to me is pretty, uh, uncontroversial.
Him being a scientist, I don't think there's anything really to say about that. I think, yeah, he collected valuable measurements, found species, et cetera. Um, it's very much a, you know, [00:25:00] data collection science and I, but yeah, but it's, it's definitely science. But I think what I mean more is that, yeah, it seemed to me more that for the, for the rest of his life, he was for every, you know, everything after those, apart from those six years, he spent it communicating it to others.
Sometimes fellow scientists, um, but a large part of it seemed to be entertaining the king, um, writing cosmos or talking, giving the public lectures and all these kind of things. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not shitting on that. Um, it seems to me like he was maybe like a revolutionary in science communication, like one of the first ones to really do that on a grand scale.
Um, it just seems to me that. I just don't know, like what ex, I mean yeah, as I said earlier, like going somewhere and saying everything is connected is not, is not a theory.
Cody Kommers: It, it sounds like maybe he was, what he really pioneered was the Stephen Pinker, Jared Diamond, uh, yeah. Template for, for, for having a successful academic career where, you know, [00:26:00]you have some, whatever you're initially going to do.
And you know, I think for both of them they did have, you know, really significant early career findings and everything and they're like, great. The rest of it is going to be me going out there talking about it and getting credit for now, just like the general notion of this field of science rather than any, any of my specific findings.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And I mean, if, if you do that very well, then great. Right? I have no problem with that. It's just, I find it slightly weird that. Yeah. I mean, so that's, that's one part. But the other part that I have slight problems about the whole science question is that, um, actually, wait, sorry. This is from notes from last episode.
Gimme a second.
Cody Kommers: While you're looking at that, what I will say is that in accord with, with your concern here, the one that you've already expressed is that actual scientists love to, to, to take shots at Jared Shyman, that Jared [00:27:00] Diamond and Steve Tinker and that sort of stuff. So certainly the, uh, you're not the first person to, to question the nature of this template, whether it's really a scientist.
The other thing is that as Wolf Notes, Darwin's so much more fucking famous than, than Humble. She calls him, you know, the lost here of science, all but forgotten in the English speaking world and everything like that. Uh, so maybe you're right, like everyone does attribute the, the, the, the sort of archetypal concept of scientist to Darwin.
And no one really feels, no one really looks up. Like yeah, there's like our, there's our science guy right there. Um, and I think that that's probably, that's probably true.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So one thing that, that I wrote down for last time, which, and there was this point that kind of annoyed me, is that. It seems to me, and again, I'm not entirely sure whether this is BOL or Wolf, I don't know, or both or whatever.
Um, but one thing that seemed to me is that they, there seems to be this confusion, it seems to me, between complexity or the [00:28:00] completeness of what you're describing on the one hand, and the precision, precision with which you're doing it. So there was this one part where they, or I think two or three times in the book, they criticized fairly explicitly Newton's kind of way of, you know, you have your formulas that can describe how things relate to each other, that kind of stuff.
And they said like, no, no, you should, you know, go out, that everything should relate to each other, et cetera. But that to me is a completely false dichotomy because number one, if you have a formula that can describe all bodies in the known universe, that's more complete than you're going to u to a rainforest and saying, oh look, the animals are related to the stones.
It's like, you know, that's, that's far less, that's much more narrow than having a theory of how. Objects move in the universe and attract each other through gravity. So I think that's just, I just don't see how that's in any way. Right. And it seems to me more that whereas someone like Newton created these precise predictions, homeboy [00:29:00] just created, I wouldn't even call 'em theories.
I think that's what, in one of these, um, uh, one of these articles I read, they just say he provided a framework for how to think about these things and that you should not ignore certain things that it's important to bear all in mind, and that's an important reminder, but I It's not a theory or Yeah.
Even science and my opinion.
Cody Kommers: Well, I, I think your, I think your point is well taken in that I think my takeaway from this Humboldt biography was that Humboldt cool guy. But I wouldn't go so far as to say like, well, you know, here's Darwin, here's Newton, here's my man. Humble. You know? Uh, so I, I, I definitely, I I think you're, you, you're probably correct about that.
And it probably goes to some, some level of explaining why vol felt it was necessary to resurrect the last hero of science. Uh, and, and why people were more comfortable forgetting about him [00:30:00] and how, especially like there's, it's cognitively, it's a lot easier to look at Darwin and say, boom, evolution and.
You know, Newton mechanics, so that's like this very easy
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: calculus
Cody Kommers: and pretty much, yeah, like all this insane chip. Uh, but, but to have the point is to have something very concrete to attach something and the nature of doing. Humboldt's endeavor is that it doesn't lend itself well to summary. And if you do summarize it and you say everything in nature's interconnected, you sound like a dipshit.
Uh, and so that's something about the nature of the project. And so I think if we really wanted to take this line of criticism seriously, it seems to me like it would be important to separate out the nature of the project itself from how easy it is to talk about in and summarize in [00:31:00] retrospect. So I think that's one, one asterisk that I'd put on your otherwise pretty sound analysis.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I also make, I actually wanted to make kind of two, uh, caveats also. One was that, and I'd add to that one person in. Who's definitely a scientist and no one would doubt it, but who maybe falls into that category and has talked about himself. Is Freeman Dyson, or was Freeman Dyson who, uh, was a, I think mainly a mathematician actually, but worked as a theoretical physicist and helped or worked with, uh, Fineman, for example, on most of Fey's famous stuff.
But Freeman Dyson also said like, he doesn't fit into the academic system because he actually never did a PhD. That's the first impressive thing, uh, in modern science. Uh, but he didn't like doing big projects. He liked working on this thing. Then, on that thing, then on another thing, and he also said like, and I don't think he Freeman Dyson ever won, know what Price, for example, even though his contributions were probably as much.
Yeah, but his couldn't be summarized in one sentence. Uh, that's one as, and the other, the last [00:32:00]point from me on this topic is that, um, there is this famous quote that, um, seems to be attributed to many people, uh, which is all sciences, either physics or stamp collecting. And of course, in some sense that's meant as a derogatory description of other people's research, but
Cody Kommers: depends on how you feel about stamp
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: collector.
Yeah, exactly. But I think it's, if, I think if you look at, through this dichotomy, it's very clear that home world was a stamp collector. He, I mean, he collected thousands of stamps in South America. So I think that's maybe one way also to think about what he did. Um,
Cody Kommers: so here, here's another, here's another thing I wanna add into that as, as kind of like a, maybe a.
You know my response to the, the physics versus stamp collecting thing, and that's that this is something we talked about in the Darwin chapter, is that both of those guys went on these big. Ambitious [00:33:00] trips to South America, and both of them, as we've just noted, got very different things out of them.
Humboldt got this big picture thing where he came back and he spent, you know, the next 30 years trying to describe what he saw. And Darwin had this, you know, really big, beautiful idea. But Darwin had an advantage that Humboldt didn't, which is that he had Humboldt's trip, uh, and he had his personal narrative.
And so that's, this is, this is how I summarized it in the, the Darwin chapter, is that. Darwin brought along with him humboldt's observations. So when he was seeing something, he wasn't just, okay, here's my visual perception of it, uh, and you know, here's what I'm getting out of it. But he simultaneously, because he was so intimately familiar with, you know, humboldt's fucking 30 volume personal narrative of everything he saw, he had that same, uh, lens with which to see it through, which I think it would be difficult to under, it would be difficult to overestimate how, uh, impactful and how useful that additional piece of [00:34:00] theoretical conceptual baggage is.
And, um, so I think it's a little bit unfair to say, well, Humboldt is, you know, wasn't as good of a, a theorist, that sort of stuff. I think that, I think that's factually accurate. Um, he did not, uh, develop the, the theorist, but to say that his role. I, I think that, yeah, it's important to keep in mind that he was working with less.
He was the first person in his, you know, sort of demographic to go try and do these things. And the fact that he didn't make a, a sense of it in the most parsimonious, you know, clean, cut, uh, unified way, uh, I think, uh, is, is a product of that as well as, as, as, as who he was. And that was the advantage Darwin had, is that now this wasn't the first time someone was going out there.
He actually had all this previous precedent to work with and, and start to put together. Uh, and so, yeah, I think I agree with you that I'm more attracted to the, the, the Darwin thing, but I think if you, uh, uh, in a, in a systematic [00:35:00] investigation of of, of the, the overall trends of science, I, I have a feeling that, um, we would consistently see perhaps a couple significant exceptions excluded that.
This sort of trend holds where the person, the first person out there doesn't understand everything she's seeing. It's the person who comes afterwards who has the advantage of, of also knowing what that first person saw. And so I, I, I feel like that's a little bit more charitable, uh, than just saying, uh, he was, uh, stamp collector.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I guess he created the groundwork that then others used. I mean, you know, that's also what, you know, these chapters that we didn't like. That's also part of that. Right. He laid the groundwork for lots and lots of different things that influenced the way we view nature today. There is actually, whilst we're talking about this, like larger things, there's one thing I realized, well when I like whilst reading the third part, is that it seemed to me that in a way, this book to me seems a bit like homeboy's work.[00:36:00]
I dunno to what extent this is. Intentional per se. But it seemed to me, because this book also, you know, as we, as you kind of also discussed, we don't really, I mean we do get an idea from bold and we do get an idea of what he did, but it's all fairly big picture. These are the way things are connected and you don't really, I dunno, I felt like it also left me slightly without, without this kind of final punch of here's, you know, science, big theory or here's this big insight into him as a person or the science he did or something like that.
It seemed to me, I dunno, at some point I was just struck that there seemed to be a bit of a parallel between the way BOL wrote science and the way this book was written. Yeah. Dunno whether that's, whether you agree with that, but.
Cody Kommers: I agree with that. And the way, you know, you, you characterized vol in terms of, uh, you know, her professional discipline, which is as a historian, which I, I have not done a ton of research about her, but just going off of what I, what I have [00:37:00] seen about her and the way that I would characterize her is as a nature writer, that is the thing that mm-hmm.
Like that to me is why the book is called Invention of Nature. Yeah. Is the reason she loves Humboldt is because she found someone who was sympathetic to, uh, you know, who, who had, who had like, you know, in a second architected this, this, this view of nature that she currently holds. And I think, again, I haven't read all of her other stuff, but if, I think if you look towards the other kinds of things she's written, uh, I don't have a list in front of me unfortunately, but, uh, to revolve around this ation that's clearly what she was getting out of.
This, you know, uh, diving into that was, that was what's, what, what connected the topics and I think where we derived the title from and, and, and that sort of stuff. And so, uh, no, she's not a scientist in the, uh, traditional sense, or at least if she had training in that. It's not really her, her primary objective anymore.
And certainly she's interested in historical phenomenon, but I think ultimately the thing that speaks to her is [00:38:00] this conception of, of, of what nature is and that sort of stuff, which is why we get this refrain over and over and over again about the interconnectedness of, of nature is that's clearly what seems to be speaking to her from, from, from that perspective.
And how she also quoted, I can't remember which passages came up with off the top of my head, but, um, how Humboldt basically, I think this was in the, um, the book. On views of nature.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Mm-hmm.
Cody Kommers: Um, the, yeah, here's, here's the quote. It, she claims, he created this new genre of nature writing combined lively prose and rich landscapes, uh, uh, descriptions with scientific observation in a blueprint for much of nature writing today.
And that clearly seems to be the sort of idiom that she's working in today. And what she, uh, at a, you know, sort of deep seated level is, is, is contextualizing her own work in, um. [00:39:00] Which is fair. That's, uh, and that's probably not the thing that you and I personally are most interested in, and I think that potentially goes away towards explaining the discourse.
Like when you look at the back of the book and you see inspired, stupendous, luminous, arresting, thrilling, gripping. I probably wouldn't use the majority of those words myself to describe this, uh, thing. And, and, and, uh, I think maybe the extent to which there's a di discord between what you and I would've liked to have gotten out of this and what the author gave us to, to go with.
Uh, and what certainly it seems that lots of other people did get outta this book 'cause did win awards and lots of people reviewed it. Well, and, and evidently it sold lots of copies and, and that sort of stuff. Is that, yeah. Uh, she, she's operating in this. Nature, writing, discipline, idiom, genre, whatever you wanna call it, which is probably not the one that is most likely to speak to, to you and me.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, that's [00:40:00] probably fair. Yeah. I mean, it, it's, I guess we didn't read the title group carefully enough, but focus too much on the adventures of Alexander Vo the last year of science. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, that's, that's I guess what I mentioned at the beginning. I think the, once you actually read the entire book and then read the title again, you go, oh, I see.
That's not what I expected. Yeah.
Cody Kommers: But anyway, fuck that. Let's talk about talking to science.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Exactly.
Cody Kommers: Um, so, okay, so I, I have, uh, this is kind of, I think my summary. I wrote a little thing here. Uh, this is sort of my summary. Of what I was most enticed by in the story of Humboldt as Wolf told it. And, you know, as much as we've given, given her criticism, she did, she, she created a very readable, uh, uh,
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: oh, sorry.
Actually, when I, when I, well, I wrote down a, my last point about her book being similar to Humboldt's is that, um, actually, so I, I only read the first half, uh, or described the first part, the second half was that like Bol she creates [00:41:00] a lot, a lot of excitement around the topic and makes it seem really cool.
That's the part I left out. Yeah. It was, I didn't even mean it to be critical in that sense. I think in the sense that it describes the big picture, it makes it seem really fascinating. And, you know, I, I'm probably gonna read a book by homeboy now because of this. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, so yeah, that's just an important part of
Cody Kommers: that.
No, and I, and I think it's, it's, uh. You don't wanna underestimate the value of, of that, of creating
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah.
Cody Kommers: A, a, a biography of, you know, a dude, especially living around 1800 and everything. That pulls you through all the way. Um, and with maybe the exception of the last couple chapters, which didn't quite pull us through, uh, uh, quite as strongly towards the end, it's still 300 pages and it's, it's a nicely it that it's a nicely done biography.
Yeah, yeah,
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: definitely.
Cody Kommers: And, um, but anyways, this, this is what I, this is the thing that like stands out to me most about the story of Humboldt and sort of connecting it to the [00:42:00] interests that I think you and I most share. And, um, it's basically. But it is similar to what we've been talking about, Humboldt's, romantic, all-encompassing approach to science, which may or may not even in your opinion, be science.
Um, but basically, uh, you see throughout the book, Humboldt Gutta, their contemporaries, all these guys were responding against the sort of like ultra rational enlightenment approach of Newton as we were, uh, just talking about and, and others like that. And. You know, in line with, what were we talking about?
The core of what the enlightenment endeavor was, was to find these overarching unified theories, singular equations that applied everywhere and to everyone. And Humboldt said, no, the world is, it's, it's too, uh, heterogeneous. And you have to go out there and you have to appreciate it in all its idiosyncratic glory and look at the individual [00:43:00] instances of what's going on, and not just like, oh, here's what it looks like in my backyard.
Therefore. Uh, it applies everywhere. And, uh, so he really took individual cases as individual cases and, you know, hardcore empirical science, which I think the kind of thing, um, that, that you and perhaps even myself find, find very appealing. Uh, it, it's not the full story according to humble. So it, uh, in order to observe all there is to observe, you have to actually have the eye of the poet as well to take a humanistic approach as well as an empirical one.
And so here's my, here's my kind of hot take, uh, on this. Is that. I'd like to think, and this is probably a hope, but you might as well call it a prediction, uh, okay. That we're going to see a kind of reemergence of this, of this romantic approach in psychology and cognitive science in the coming years. And so the second half of the 20th century, the, the sort of paradigm that, especially cognitive science and, and certainly to some extent [00:44:00] psychology as well has been working in for the past, let's call it 70 years or whatever, is really an age of hyper rationalism.
Um, this is typified by like mind is computer metaphor and, and that sort of stuff. And, and really this like, okay, uh, we've got that. And then also, you know, like just another similar similarly motivated thing, all psych experiments having been run on undergraduates comes from basically that assumption. If people are everywhere the same, if the mind is essentially the same kind of thing, this, this little computer unified that can be described by, uh, unified theory potentially then.
Uh, you don't really have to go. There's not, it's not theoretically clear why you'd have to go out there and, um, uh, you know,
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. Only run
Cody Kommers: on different kind
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: of people. Yeah. Sort of interaction effect between culture and your phenomenon. Yeah.
Cody Kommers: And so my, my sort of claim here is that, you know, I think over the last 10 years we've started to see the fallout of this hyper rationalist, uh, approach.
And we call it by the sort of individual [00:45:00] crisis like replication, crisis theory, crisis, generalizability, crisis, whatever your favorite one is, uh, and perhaps individually they are these sort of. You know, crises and everything. But I think collectively they point towards an overall system failure. Or at least, you know, if, if not a failure, then at least a, a major fault.
And so one way to respond to this fault would be to go deeper into rationalism, to double down and assume that if we just do replication right, and we get statistics locked down and we've got pre-registration and this and that, and, you know, more sophisticated modeling and everything, that eventually we're going to get the psychology and the cognitive science that we want.
Um, but personally, I don't think so. Uh, I think instead, uh, we're eventually gonna have to find that, that what satisfies us is something closer to what Humboldt did on the ground, romantic, humanistically driven approach that seeks to contextualize humans in their national environment rather than the sterile confines of the laboratory.
And so that is, [00:46:00] again, somewhere between a hope, a prediction, a feeling that I, you know, kind of. Have identified within in myself and, and what I see in, you know, what Humboldt was trying to do and being like, well, great, we have this, we, we've exhausted this approach of this Newtonian hyper rationalism. Uh, what do we get by responding against that?
And I think we're gonna see more of that over the coming years in psychology of something that looks like a re uh, resurgence of this kind of romantic, all encompassing approach to science, particularly in our fields of interest, psychology, cognitive science.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Do you know, I mean, I know there's this whole research area of humanistic psychology, right?
Which I know nothing about. Do you know anything about this? I feel like it used to be more popular a few decades ago, but yeah, I dunno.
Cody Kommers: Yeah. Uh, I mean certainly there is not. One counterpoint to what I'm saying is that really throughout, uh, all of the 20th century, there have been these really strong humanistic [00:47:00] attempts to, uh, do a humanistic version of psychology, the signal version of it being Freud.
Uh, so that was really what Freud was, was, was trying to do, was to create this ultimate humanistic psychology based, not on empirical evidence, which we of course make fun of him for today, um, per se. But, uh, like, uh, on interpretation and hermeneutics and this different humanistic approach. And then in the second half of the 20th century kind of had this post Freudian Yeah, that's what I was existential.
That's what
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I heard of. Yeah.
Cody Kommers: Uh, hu humanistic, uh, psychology and everything. And, uh, uh, yeah. So I think.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I guess my question is more, I don't really know what that's, I know the word and it sounds like that, but I don't really know what's, what it is. That's kind of my question.
Cody Kommers: Suffice to say that there are, uh, any versions of this that I'm sure I, I do know of a couple and I'm sure there's plenty that I don't know of any versions of this.
Very ma, very, very fringe, you know, sort of like ways of doing psychology. And yes, it's glorious that Scott [00:48:00] Berry Kaufman calls himself a humanistic psychologist, uh, and, and, and everything like that. And I think that is not unrepresentative of the kind of thing that I, that I. Uh, that I'm talking about that yes, here's someone who's trying to take seriously, um, you know, how do we actually apply the empirical, legitimate scientific stuff we know to the actual lived experience of our own lives, which I think what he means when he says humanistic psychologist that may or may not, he's a, you know, podcast contemporary.
Uh, so it may or may not be one of the people you have in mind.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, I mean, no, I mean, I knew of his podcast, but I. I, I just heard like, yeah, that than whatever, sixties, seventies, there was this humanistic psychology. Yeah. That's basically literally all I knew about it.
Cody Kommers: Um, at any rate, um, and, and people, people really like that.
The, the Viktor Frankl logo therapy, humanistic psychology, uh, kind of version of, I think is the most, the one that has received the most mainstream traction. And like, you know, I ask people all the time on my podcast, like, what are the books that [00:49:00] most, uh, influence you? And for the kind of people that I talk to, there's two of 'em.
One is Good Cher Bach, uh, which like, especially for a generation of, of artificial intelligence and computational neuroscientists, basically like inspired every single goddamn one of 'em to pursue that. Basically
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: our parents' generation, right?
Cody Kommers: Yeah. And, and definitely lots of people after that, but there was definitely a generation where it was like this, like set the tone for it.
So anyway, there's that. And then the other one is, is Man's Search for Meeting Vitor Frankl, uh, which I. Basically, he calls it existential, uh, you know, psychology. But it's basically all these, all these kind of things that I think are sort of, uh, part and parcel. Like, like this, this is, this is the signal, the second half of the 20th century contribution to, to this kind of endeavor.
But anyway, I think we're gonna see that become a more mainstream thing. And, you know, like Joe Henrik's book, uh, like the, the weirdest people in the world or whatever, I have, uh, copy sitting over there [00:50:00]that, you know, is the kind of thing that's going to make people start thinking about, okay, well all of my research's been done on MTurk workers, psychology undergraduates, that sort of thing.
And now we've got people really start to make these forceful arguments, uh, about how limiting to, uh, you know, convenient samples of, of people to study for, for complex, deep-seated psychological and cognitive phenomena, uh, that's not gonna get us there. And I think it's some point, one of the things that is gonna resonate with people is something like what Humboldt did, doing this big, ambitious, newsworthy, very kind of splashy, um, adventure.
That, you know, people are gonna look at and say, yes, this is actually going out there into the world and applying the previously sterile and, and whatever. And people are gonna look at and be like, that's not fucking science and they're gonna be right. Um, but I think that, that this sort of, uh, give and take and then it's gonna [00:51:00] inspire the next wave of, of a hyper rationalist, you know, better theories, uh, and, and, and that sort of stuff.
But that, that, if I had to try and anticipate the broad strokes of what psychology is gonna look like over the next, you know, 50 years, it's gonna be very similar to, um, the kind of thing that we've been talking about in the romantic, you know, science of, of Humboldt as a response to the enlightenment rationalism of, of Newton.
And then followed by ultimately much better theories of, um, the, the more sophisticated, uh, in this case in Humboldt, in Darwin's case, biological world. And in our case, the, the psychological world.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I think I, I think in general, I agree. And then, I mean, I think I'd frame it slightly more positive. I think it's just, you know, you have to go through the lab-based period to, you know, do things precisely.
And I think there's definitely gonna be a lot, much more in trying to get, you know, I mean that's the whole thing where people like try and use wearables or like Facebook data or whatever, right. [00:52:00] Where people are trying to like, yeah. Limited by the data that they can get and they're trying to make, uh, it more about what people actually do rather than sitting a few people in a lab.
But yeah, I, I think in principle, I, I agree with most of what you said. It also sounds like I'm not gonna, uh, um, uh, how should you say it? It also sounds like that that large, what you suggested, that someone has to go out there and, um, and. Anyway, I, I don't know exactly how to phrase this now, but it sounded like you had someone in mind who might be interested in doing that, and that person might be you.
I don't know. You don't have to confirm or deny this.
Cody Kommers: I, I think you're probably, you're probably right about that. Um, I think you're very much right about that. No, I mean, I, the reason you picked me out for this book is 'cause you knew I'd be sympathetic to this character, um, who, his conception of how, how knowledge should be acquired is by [00:53:00] going out through these things.
And Humboldt's certainly not the first person looked at like, oh, this is really cool. Um. It's the reason why I'm obsessed with anthropologists. 'cause this is the whole premise of their, their thing is, uh, at least back in, back in the day, anthropologists a little bit different now. Um, but you know, like, oh, I have to go out there somewhere where it's going to resemble this, you know, sort of big Indiana Jones style adventure and that's how I am gonna get the knowledge that I need.
And, uh, so yeah, it's definitely something that's overall is something that interests me very much. Um, I'd like to think that, uh, I'm better suited to that kind of thing than, than the laboratory work if for another reason than I'm just not very good at the laboratory work. Um, and so, uh, you know, by process of elimination, hopefully there's.
There's something there. Um, and, uh, you know, ultimately I probably would be, I'm probably not good enough as a scientist to, uh, to uh, to do the actual, you [00:54:00] know, work of it like you're saying. And probably would, you know, in all honesty, aspire to be more like the whole thing. I was like, well, you do a little bit of work, you get the, uh, he did he
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: his five years of data collection.
Cody Kommers: Exactly. You do the, you do the PhD's worth of work and then you sit there talking about it for the rest of the time, in all honesty. Yeah. I think that, that, that is, uh. That's definitely something that, you know, for better or for worse, that's the kind of thing that, um, I don't know if I'm, if I'm cut out to do it, but certainly there's, you know, I, I am drawn to that in a certain way.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Well, I I certainly hope that in like in 50 years or whatever, there'll be a biography written about you and I'll read and go. That's not really a science though, is it? It'd
Cody Kommers: be like, at the end of the day, we'll all we, we can all agree on that. Whatever I'm going to do bigger, small traveler at home. It's probably not gonna be very good science, whatever it is.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But if it's entertaining, then
Cody Kommers: sure. Yeah. But that's, yeah, exactly. No, I, uh, and, and I, I can't disagree with [00:55:00]even having said all that. I can't disagree with any of your characterizations of that, um, of that way about going, going about doing things.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Uh, do you have any major points about homework? I'm not sure I have.
I mean, I, I still have those articles. They're kind of interesting. I, we definitely gonna put them in a description. I mean, one was kind of interesting. There's these two guys, I dunno how to pronounce his name, he's Spanish, so Holy Pal. Uh, and William Bond, they wrote this like small review article about homework and they, reinvention of nature.
I mean, what's in, I mean, I think this is kind of a fairly minor point in that they say like, yeah, what he did is really cool and everything, but like, you know, obviously he missed out some stuff. Um, and also it's the, the general, um, I. So this maybe a slightly nuanced point here to make. Obviously they don't say that deforestation is good, but just because deforestation is bad, it doesn't mean [00:56:00] it's good to put trees everywhere.
And um, so apparently there's been a few, you know, they're not criticizing homeboy, this is stuff that came out in the last 20 years or something. But you know, if you put lots of trees there, you know, often you have a vegetation that was specifically everything is adapted to that. And if you just put trees there, it's not necessarily a good idea.
Apparently. It also makes water like rivers flow a lot less fast, so a lot slower when you put lots of trees around it, whatever. Um, so some of the stuff you said wasn't that correct? Um, but it's a fairly minor point in the sense that, yeah, I mean someone who did science or not 200 years ago, uh, is not gonna have the complete picture, but it was still kind of interesting and they seemed to do interesting stuff about fire as an evolutionary adaptive.
Force, which I never thought about. Um, but you know, some stuff burns more easily than others. Some areas burn more easily than others and that affects the life that develops there. I never thought about that, but yeah, once you put it like that, it's like, yeah, of course. Yeah. So I think those are like, um, I dunno, I have [00:57:00]one minor actually just about Cosmos, just because I read, you know, just the very beginning of the introduction.
It's kind of interesting to me the way he wrote because, you know, I mean, I guess parts of this was almost just written like 18, 30, forties, something like that. Right? Something around that time. That sounds about right. And um, you know, I guess that was when people wrote these, especially in German, always more elaborate, longer sentences with more sub clauses and that kind of thing.
And he definitely does that, but I think he does it in a, I was surprised how well or how poetic he writes, like the first sentence translates more or less, oh god. I'm not a professional translator, but I'll try. Um, the first sentence basically translates to, um, at the eve of a much moved life, I hand over this work to the German public.
Um, so, and then the picture of this work, um, took me almost half, oh no, sorry, the picture of this work, [00:58:00] Harvard in front of my soul, almost half a century or something like that. And it, but it, it's very, it's very readable though. It's not, you know, I'm in principle, not a huge fan of this kind of like writing.
Um, I think I do like it quite straightforward and to the point, but it's very readable. And one word that really caught my attention, not only 'cause it's here, but because it's also in the like introduction or whatever, to personal narrative or something like that is the word shhe. Um. 'cause he, in both cases, so Stan is, is a kind of shy timidness when you're kind of afraid of being like judged or whatever.
And that's how he starts off in each first paragraph of saying like, I timidly present you this work as a someone like, please don't hurt me after I give you this book. And that's just not something I expected. Um, after you hear that he was so, he seemed like such a confident guy, it seemed to me. But then he always said this,
Cody Kommers: maybe he [00:59:00] anticipated 200 years later, people would be sitting there and be like, this isn't science.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Well he also, the fun thing in this one is, again, this is a long and convoluted sentence and I can translate it, but he basically says like, yeah, I know I've been putting off publishing this book. And usually when that happens, people trash the book when it, you know, when they've been waiting for like five years extra for work.
People trash it. Please don't do this. That's basically what he's saying. But I definitely want to read this book though at some point. Yeah. But those are basically the, the last smaller points I had. Yeah. Dunno whether you have anything, anything left?
Cody Kommers: No, I think we, we covered it all. I think we were pretty correct about our discussion of the overarching themes in the, uh, sort of firsts, the first episode.
Um, so interconnectedness of nature that was there through the whole thing. Yeah. Um, and then also some of the stuff that we've been talking about in terms of the romantic approach to, to science and everything we've discussed in terms of is it stamp collecting? Is it physics, is it this holistic thing?
Are you really getting anything out of it? That, that, that sort of thing. And [01:00:00] how that's representative of the, the period that that, that he was in and what other people were interested in at the time and how it dovetailed with, um, not only Za but presumably, you know, other romantic figures and everything.
And, uh, yeah, I think for both of us, it sounds like there were parts we liked, parts we didn't like about the biography itself, found Humboldt, uh, an interesting character. Probably not at the level of a Darwin or Newman, but still worth reading about and considering. And then I think, um, this, this made me excited to read his stuff.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah.
Cody Kommers: Um, as well as, uh, a few adjacent works. Like there is this, uh, uh, I think it was right before the, the Thoreau chapter, the end of the Cosmos chapter. Mm-hmm. She mentioned Edgar Allen pose 100 page prose poem called Eureka, which is basically his response to, um, cosmos and everything like that. Super excited to read that.
And, um, uh, you know, a couple [01:01:00] other works like that. Yeah, definitely, definitely gave me a, uh, an appreciation for this period, which was for the most part, something that I did not know very much about going in. And so I really appreciated this insight. It through the, the person of humble. And it made me excited to, to think like, okay, yeah, I wanna learn more about this period, what these people were up to, especially for the aforementioned reason.
Um, that Cody's argument is, uh, our, you know, the, the next, the coming period's gonna look more like this period. And Ben's uh, you know, speculation, uh, that Cody sees him fancies himself as, you know, uh, being a, being a part of that, uh, there's, there's a connection between that. Now
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: imagine
Cody Kommers: you
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: just reading this going, oh my God, I could be the next home vote the home word of the mind.
Um, that, uh, yeah, I [01:02:00] think I agree with your summary. I think it was the same for me. I liked it. You know, obviously you're not gonna like everything in a. Long book. Um, but overall I thought it was pretty cool. Um, yeah, I'm definitely gonna, I'm probably gonna start with the shorter ones because Cosmos is like, even the first one is like 400 pages or something.
Right? That's like one book, one out of five. Yeah. Um,
Cody Kommers: book two sounds really cool. It's about the mind.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, exactly. That's be interesting.
Cody Kommers: That one sounds awesome. That
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: one sounds super cool. I'm slightly afraid it's gonna be completely wrong. Like, just like weird or something like where you go, like
Cody Kommers: I, yeah.
It, we didn't really feature into his, into the, the beginning part of the book that he was interested in, in that sort of stuff.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah.
Cody Kommers: Um, 'cause you know, as we sort of discussed about. Andrea Wolf's interest in nature. And, uh, so yeah, I'd be, I'd be very curious to see what, what Humboldt has to say about that and, and whether there's anything you know of, of worthy of, of deeper consideration in that.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Cool.
Cody Kommers: Anyway, Ben, I wanna say thank you for, in inviting me and, and this was super fun to do.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Well, thank you.
Cody Kommers: I would not have paid this close attention to, to this book if, if not [01:03:00] doing it in this format, so I got a lot out of it. Uh, and it was really fun to do. And, um, yeah, I appreciate you inviting me to do it, and it was a very thoughtful suggestion and I think you were dead on.
But, uh, I don't, I don't think I would claim to, to be the next tumble by any such of the imagination, but he's certainly a figure that I felt myself in, in quite a bit of sympathy with and, and, uh, definitely appreciated what he was trying to do in a lot of ways. And, uh, yeah. Uh, thanks for having me on. And if people wanna follow my stuff, they can do it.
Uh, at my newsletter, cody commerce.substack.com, which is where I'm doing this sort of travel by psychology. Um, you know, uh, in integration here and that, that's the kind of writing and, and stuff that I'm trying to do. And then also, of course, my, my podcast Cognitive revolution.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. And I'll put those in the description.
Yeah. Well, thank you then for doing it. Um, yeah, I always, again, if there's another third book I've done for this and yeah, the, the amount of detail you with which I read this book is so much higher than usual. Um, yeah. And then maybe, uh, if anyone's still [01:04:00] listening after three hours, thank you. I dunno why, but thank you.
Um, and yeah, so I guess as I, as I uh, mentioned the first one, there's a sign, there's a chance that's not too low, that at some point I'm gonna do the, a good topography. That's supposed to be very good. Um, and yeah, I think I, I mean this was actually the first nonfiction I've done for this, right? The other two were fiction, both, and it's, I mean, it's fun how it's such a different.
Discussion maybe in part also because you took a, I think with the other two we were, uh, maybe less prepared you could say, but um, more of a kind of just chatting about it. Um, whereas now we had a much more topical discussion, which was really cool. But, so I definitely want to have more kind of science books on those kind of things in here also that, um, address some of the topics.
But that's, we'll see what I'll do next.
Cody Kommers: Yeah.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Anyway.
Cody Kommers: Awesome.
Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Thanks for listening. Cool. Thanks for joining.